take take taste taste taste sweet
by flesh and bone telephone
Summary: A dead boy paints her nails — [Bonnie, Kol] [Kennet]


**AN:** Kennet, broke my brain over rationalizing all the magic in this fic. doesn't matter if none of us buy it, better live in a world that has Kol in it and makes no sense rather than a world that simply makes no sense. Conclusion? head cannons are greater actual cannon. but you already know that, it's why you're on ffnet lbr. i've been wanting to write for bonnie for ages, and i missed kol. and i love kennet so much, like it's everything that's brilliant about thorny, prickly partnerships. i hope i did them both justice. i've actually been working on this for a whole bloody week and a half, dismayed at every turn, i wrote a hella lot, but not everything made the cut, because when i reread it i realized some of it didn't make any freaking sense. and not even in the intended way. anyway, warnings; this is my first time writing for this pairing, so don't get your hopes too high, or like...be gentle with me. also, this one shot will only make sense in a few days. you might read it, and then go, _what the hell is this shit?_ but then again you might not, and it might make sense by itself. those who don't understand it by the end? it will be clear to you in a few days. man, being cryptic is hard. idk, someone told me that some of the stuff i write is triggery, so beware. this might be triggery, i _guess._

* * *

.

.

.

_Lay my body down down, down upon the water, wrapped up in the clothes of my mother and my father._  
_Oh, this is longing, I want to be complete. I was waiting round in a little jump seat._  
_I had a hunger, a mouthful of interludes. You'll do anything just to get rescued. I had a longing, isn't that the key?_  
_Take take taste taste taste sweet. They said I'd gone South, I'd gone asunder - they don't know hunger or what I been under._  
_They were all laughing, thought I was debris._  
_I was just free._

.

.

.

* * *

A dead boy paints her nails.

Steady brushstrokes of a nice, even red - chili pepper red, red like the glossy insides of Cayenne, like deep roasted Masala, and the rippling gash where the horizon swallows down the sun.

It's not Bonnie's color. He lays a finger over his mouth, the little wick of paint just under his eyelashes. _Hush._

-_shhhhhhhhh_ the night whispers and slinks in through her windows, all of them, pawing the coverlet, stroking the fringes of her curtains, the glass trinket on her ceiling chiming. Bonnie brings her knees to her chest quickly, feet jerking from the floor and onto the duvet, feathers fluffing beneath her, her toes bump against his knees but Kol keeps a rapt eye on the task at hand while the souls slither over the carpet, pooling in a thin black flood, flow over his boots, merging in shade.

Her wrist hurts when Kol pulls it, tutting over her sudden motions, she's _disrupting_ his work. Kol brings the brush back over her nails, finishing off the second coat.

Death crowds the floor, and he still won't tell her the secret.

If she had magic, her fingertips itch. If she had the breath of the world back in her instead of this single useless gasp, pickled and jarred in her, her soul kept preserved rather than alive, marinated in vinegar and the ointments of winter….

_If she had magic_ she could wipe the little smirk on his face, make shrapnel pierce the back of his eyes, make him _howl_ for mercy.

Kol caps the nail polish, Bonnie's knees huddle to her chest, and he turns the back of her hand towards him carefully, gently, like she's one of those petrified mounted sparrows in the English House he always had to be careful not to rattle the stuffing of.

Bonnie keeps the limbs of her tense, arm stiff and straight, avoiding the pull that might bring the rest of her body closer. "Tell me."

His eyes flutter up to meet hers, he'd forgotten she was there. A furtive glance, his thumb presses against the pulse in her palm for one beat, two beats, three. "Not yet."

She makes a fist with the hand not in his, the best she could ever do would be to punch him, but Bonnie's proud, she doesn't think she could bear a dead boy's laughter.

Then Kol's smile swallows up the skin over her knuckles, wet and warm with the puffs of his dead, cigarette heart. Bonnie's fist clenches hard, harder than in second grade and she'd knocked Benny Horowitz's teeth out for crumpling up her Valentine, so hard she almost reconsiders her pride. Her insides flare to life when he begins to worry the skin on the back of her hand between his teeth, but doesn't break skin.

His lips close hard over her hand, and Bonnie's _seriously_ torn between punching him and more feminine indignation, like _slapping_ him. Loud, thunderous, is the raspberry he blows. The noisy, wet kisses blown on a baby's gurgling belly.

Then he comes away with a lewd, wet pop. Bonnie's face feels hotter than whatever unholy furnace he'd leapt out of. His mouth glistens wet and slick, and the tremors still travel bizarrely down her arm, as intended.

Bonnie grinds her teeth, murderous - Kol tuts, and blows on the back of her nails.

* * *

The dead tell the same lies they would in life, they say the same things, go through the same motions, dance the same dances, walk the same lines. As if by imitating life as closely as they can, one day a turn of that same waltz might spin them back into the light.

Kol carries a white oak stake balanced precariously in the nook of his elbow - sometimes tucked in the slide of his jacket, in his boot, but always within reach, _always on hand._

He steps behind her, peeking over her shoulder, at her corpse. The skin between his brows scrunch, and he drawls out a sarcastic congratulations on a job. well done.

Bonnie jerks as a chill grips her body. She can't look away from her own death quick enough, the sight of him a terrible, unholy surprise. Looking at him, she fights an onset of dizziness. "I closed it up," She feels the blood drain from her face, "You're supposed to be _gone_."

His smile is mechanical. "I am," he tilts his head, peddles back. "_Here_. Just not here enough to stab the Gilbert bitch is all. It's complicated, I'll draw you a chart later."

"But how?"

"I may be an Original darling, but I've got more than just charm up my sleeve," He jerks his chin at the doorway. "Dear Jer's gone to get a shovel?" His smile's entirely too toothy, too mean, "At least you've got something to bury, my brother had better luck with the hoover. Nifty little things, don't you think?"

Bonnie doesn't feel sorry for him. _At all. _Yet it's dawning on her, little by little, that she's dead, _Kol's_ dead, and if he can _see_ her, he can do a lot of other things to her too.

His smile pulls at the corners, long, slow, _wide_. "Careful are we?"

She keeps her mouth shut. There's a reason he'd been in the coffin longest.

"You're smart," He says admiringly, "So you'll listen to me, witch. I've a secret, you want to hear it?"

"No."

Kol tosses his head and heaves out a belittling sigh. "_Do_ lie better."

She remembers his hands on her throat, except she doesn't have lightening and the black rot of old tongues behind her might anymore, does she? The _last_ thing she's going to do is trust Kol, and the worst thing right now is for her to provoke him. He's already pissed that she defied him and she's not sure he can make her any deader than she already is, but she doesn't want to try it.

The idea that she's stuck in a bubble of endless, immortal silence with nothing but Kol for company is mortifying, some margin of her horror must show because he acts on it, blood in the water.

Kol's got a white oak stake jaunty in the notch of his elbow, and he cups the side of his mouth one hand. It takes everything Bonnie has not to recoil from him, to keep a cold front when he leans down to whisper in her ear. "Tell Gilbert not to bother with digging graves, he's got sloppy technique," Goosebumps spike over her skin, and she doesn't have to see his face to know that Kol's put on a grin so churlish, so arrogant it could provoke Buddhist priests to violence. "Tell him to put you up in the mortuary, in a nice Bonnie-sized freezer. _Special just for you_."

Bonnie turns her head, and looks him straight in the eye. "Why."

If her brass surprises him, there's really nothing he gives away, not for free anyway. "I've a feeling about you, Bonnie Bennet."

"A feeling," She repeats, flat. Dark brown eyes pour nothing but silence to her, but he isn't smiling anymore. "You _want_ something from me."

He bops a fingertip over the bridge of her nose, she's still blinking when he drags it away. "I've a secret, young witch, and when you realize it, _you'll_ be the wanting something from me."

* * *

It's not a door that goes both ways. Bonnie's got her fair chance at second chances, and this one's the last. She's not going to tempt life and death, but it's cold, so cold being what she is right now, and she turns over Kol's words in her head. It's not like she's losing sleep anyway, what with being dead and all.

He must have latched onto Jeremy, it's just the sort of parasitical thing she imagines people like him _do_. Telling Jeremy seems like more trouble than its worth, it'd do nothing but aggravate him. There're no witches in Mystic Falls anymore - no one who can do anything about the lingering dead anyway. And any witch they could find who might do something might also decide that Bonnie's the same abomination that Kol is, and they'd _both_ be done for.

Jeremy's already lying for her, she can't burden him with this either.

Kol's a grade A manipulator, beneath the mischievous Peter Pan cuff he slips on so easily. He led a troop of the undead, of Silas's sacrifices, out for her blood, and all but raised tactical hell.

He's very good at pretending to be an imp, at pretending to be a gambler when she _knows_ that Kol plays for keeps, Kol plays the long game, and Kol plays to _win_. The truth is that Kol only comes to violent conclusions when he _has_ to, Bonnie's understanding is that he only pretends senseless malice so people might not fear him possessing a shrewder mind. Bonnie isn't going to make that mistake.

Kol has befriended _witches_ through some alien, unheard of diplomacy. He'd managed to secure their ear, and their esteem. Kol knows several things, and nothing better than saving his own skin.

He's doing a good job of manipulating her with his 'secrets', or the promise of them. Bonnie knows this, and she also knows that nothing in this world would bring him greater joy than to get into Jeremy's head, which would essentially be what Bonnie would be inviting if she told anyone about him.

So she keeps quiet. Talks to Jeremy about logging into her email account, and sits still wondering why Kol's so quiet, why she hasn't seen him since Graduation.

Kol reappears, and it's too soon. Gingerly stepping over rolled heads and autumn debris, he stops to tut over her father's corpse.

"I swear to God," Tears sear down her cheeks, her nails dig deep into her palms, and there's a frightening gale whipping in her with no direction to lead it where it might destroy. She hasn't felt this senseless, this wild, and this_ useless_ in years. "If you say I told you so…"

She feels scooped out, a shell blaring emptiness. She drags the sleeve of her sweater over her nose, rough, her head aching, like all the blood vessels have swelled to bursting.

Kol surprises her. Gently he plucks at her sleeve, drawing her towards him. There's a deep green scarf around his throat, the smell of popcorn beneath the carnage, streamers flap up high from the beams, from the streetlights. They'd make a sight if anyone could see them, two deado's in the aftermath of a public murder. Kol's fingers brushing away the hair whistling frailly around her ears, her horrified tears spilling over his palms, this always leads somewhere. She knows certainly that he's going to kick her in the gut.

"What are you going to do to me, dead witch?" Kol murmurs. She's aghast at the chilled cherry of his cheeks, a boy out in the cold. The palms of him are warmer than death should allow. Jeremy couldn't touch her, she doesn't remember how touch _feels_ until someone else finally does it. She doesn't have the breath, the spatial reasoning beyond her remember how to make her eyes knives, to tell herself to keep the shock from shining out of every part of her, through the stunned halt of her dead heart. Kol's hands are chafed raw from the cold, prickle on her skin, warm still. If he'd been carved out from ice, he'd still be the warmest thing in this choking silence.

Kol's head dips down to meet her gaze, appraising intently the grief dragging down her face, welling in her eyes, making her nose run.

Kol doesn't care. Kol continues talking in a soft, quiet sort of way, thumbs grazing the slant of her cheekbones, the rawness of her prickling like spit on a schoolyard wound. "Can you make my head explode? Your magic's gone," Soothing, "You're as barren as the grave."

He dances out of her reach when she lashes out, his laughter hearty, ringing out into the clear, cold night. "Oh, come on, Bonnie! There's such little joy allowed to the dead - and this is a such a fine, fine opportunity." His arms rise out, a magician encompassing an audience, the carnage his lofty stage. "I told you so, Bonnie Bennet. _I told you so."_

* * *

Bonnie becomes the anchor. Bonnie isn't alive, not really, but it's a whole lot more alive than Kol is. Being the ferrier of the dead is painful, it's the worst pain Bonnie has ever felt, but she is alive. People can see her now. She can go to college. She can feel the heat of Jeremy's warmth, the sun on her bare shoulders, hear Elena's laughter without feeling like some desperate voyeur.

Kol strolls down the street, umbrella in hand. Periwinkle lights streak around his feet, colored by the multiple shades of the thing. They spring over the pavement like pennies and rubies wherever Kol steps. His umbrella bobbing in the crowd of heads.

She tugs at Jeremy's hand so hard he moans that she's turning his bones to dust.

"Didn't you see him?"

"See who?" Jeremy perks up, not unlike a bloodhound. Expression suddenly serious. Kol stops across the street, turning slowly towards them with all the exaggerated motion of a mime. Kol makes a skeptical frown, looking as someone being discussed in public tends to upon hearing their name. "Is it another dead guy? Should we - do you want me to take you somewhere to sit until it's done?" Jeremy squints and Kol springs out a dazzling, white smile, wiggling the fingers around his umbrella in a little wave. "Bonnie?"

Kol raises his other hand to take a contemplative bite out of a bagel, chewing placidly. "No, it's okay," Bonnie manages to look away, forcing out a reassuring smile. "They're gone, maybe they'll come back later. Sorry."

"Don't apologize," Jeremy squeezes her palm and kisses her. His lips taste tart like the lemonade from the fair, her mouth tingles. He pulls away with a warm smile and she wonders if he can taste the drum of her pulse, if she's given herself away, but Jeremy lets go of her hand. "I'll see you later, okay?"

"Sure," she chirps. Utterly pained, she watches Jeremy disappear into the crowd. Bonnie turns and grinds from the corner of her mouth. "I'm going to _kill_ you."

"Gilbert's beaten you to the punch," He snarks casually through a mouthful of salami and ricotta, "Seems to do that a lot."

She slaps the bagel out of his hand and he yelps, scandalized. Bonnie's already grabbing his arm and dragging him out of public sight. He lets her shove him. When his shoulder hits the backalley walls, the umbrella rattles out of his hand, pinwheels on the earth. He sighs, stops to rest his head back, thunking his skull against the brick and staring up at the towering fire escape. Midday's doused the alleyway in a warm shade, clammy, the rails above gleam like shoe polish. Kol swipes at his mouth. "Where are we?"

"Back-alley of the Grille," Bonnie snaps.

Kol, for some reason, finds this _hilarious._

Bonnie doesn't have time for his lame and _insane_ inside jokes with the universe. She grabs a fistful of his jacket. Wonders when the dead had a selection in wardrobe. "Why are you here?"

"Dunno," Kol rolls his neck, looking down at her. His brow cool, "How'd you like being alive, Bonnie?"

"Don't dodge."

"_You're_ dodging," His hand closes around hers, _she doesn't move_, "I was right, wasn't I? Lucky thing you had a body to come back to. Lucky thing I advised against maggots. How does it feel to be returned to a vessel of flesh and bone, and know _exactly_ my hand in it?"

_Why is he so warm?_ It offends her on a molecular level, there are rules. _Rules. _The dead weren't supposed to be the way Kol was. Kol wasn't supposed to be some strange exception. But then again, he's the fifth abomination in a family string of abominations, of course he'd manage to turn nature on its head and excel as an anomaly even in death. "I'm the anchor." She pronounces, chilly. "I'll push you through, I'll – "

"No, you _won't._" Shadow pools in the dimple of his cheek. "Do you want the secret, Bonnie Bennet?"

She tries to slide away from him, except he's still got a firm, elegant hold on her wrist, "You _want_ something from me."

"Back scratching," Kol shrugs, grip flexing lazily, "A transaction. When I tell you the secret, I get something back."

"You're crazy," Bonnie sneers, shoving him back again. Kol sighs, lets go off her hand, let's her step back. _Let's_ her. Bonnie seethes. "Because there's nothing I want from you. _Nothing._"

"Really?" He says, in a quiet, inquiring voice. "You like being ripped apart by death? You like it when Damon threatens everything you love and you can't raise a hand to stop him? Of course, being a Deux Ex Machina had its occupational hazard, not to mention it's made your life a living thankless hell. Every heard a pipe of gratitude from anyone? Flowers? Fruit basket? No? Bunch of ungrateful louts, let's be honest. But even then, there was power in it, dead witch. Power in your hands, the pulse of this world in your throat. You felt alive, didn't you? You weren't _this_ small, this brittle. You can't protect anything the way you are now. I can give you your magic back. Something to take dull the knife, only life, only magic can dull the painful brunt of death. How much more can your body take before it's riddled with rot?"

He's magnetic, all these old as balls originals have the gift of the gab, Bonnie tells herself. Fine oratory, persuasive, powerful - dark brown eyes looking into her like the deep, bottomless wells. Harrowingly focused. _He can go to hell._

"You want me to raise you back from the dead," Bonnie says, amazed at him, at his gall. Is that all he thinks it'll take? Some calculated jabs at her friends, the dangling of mysterious prospects over her nose? He's straightening off the wall, hunching his shoulders, shadow draping over her. A lot more malevolent than he was before, a second ago, suddenly a lot more ill meant. Bonnie feels the light on her back like a cold chill, filtered through murky glass. "_You don't even have a body._"

"We'll figure something out," Kol replies, not a bump in his master-plan. Speaking with the offhanded confidence Bonnie normally associates with two thousand year old, murderous _psychopaths_. "My being here, your being here, we're already _halfway_ there."

"I don't have magic." This time when he tries to bop her nose she slaps his hand away with a vicious scowl, contempt settling on her face. "_Don't patronize me."_

Kol raises his hands up, as if to back away. Funny, he doesn't take a single step out of her space. The smell of him should be rot, _maggots_ - not smoked cedar and burning leaves, and clothes left too long in the sun to dry. "I'm being much nicer than I have to be."

"You can't hurt me," It's true. She grabs onto that like a life-line, it emboldens her, makes her angrier. She's the _anchor_, if he could kill her he'd have done it ages ago. "I don't have to do _anything_ for you."

"Except that I'm not threatening you, if it came off that way I'm sorry. Old habits die hard," His mouth thins, a grim masculine line. She hasn't sucked him into purgatory yet, and he tastes her hesitation and knows it very well. He's given her a hook, and Bonnie's biting. "I know things, Bonnie - things that can overturn the tide of every battle, _every war_. You think Silas is my only area of supernatural expertise? My mother was a witch, my years were spent in the company of the most devastatingly insane covens in history, written and unwritten, breathing and buried. I've held court with demigods, with necromancers. I was beginning to feel the pulse of the world before it was snatched away from me. Do you understand, Bonnie? You're powerless, but only because you choose to be."

"So you know stuff, _so what?"_

"I'm still here, aren't I? You haven't shunted me into the darkness," He has every right to sound smug, except his tone is simple, deliberating. "I'm here when I shouldn't be, because I know tricks, I know things. _I know the secret_. You know that when I say I can give you your magic back that I'm speaking the truth, and that's why I'm still here. That's why we're still talking."

There's a hard lump in her throat, her jaw in an angry, hostile line. Her fingertips don't spark, the dead slink through her like knives, and she breathes now, stale and jarred, her heart working like an old mechanical horse, a steel mill. She doesn't feel _alive_ with the chill of sunlight on her back, she feels like she's occupying a too huge body, wearing her own corpse like an ill-fitting costume. Feelings all the pangs, and the hollows, the dips of dry river beds empty were vibrant blood, the voice of her spirit was supposed to flow, deep and quietly electric. Kol's right, _he is_. When she closes her palms dust settles in them, dead skin cells and mottled air. She's alive, but life doesn't swim in her veins, not really.

She's in her room, a dead boy paints her nails.

* * *

Kol thinks they make a lovely pair, he says it to piss her off. _Dead ol' me with a wealth of magical knowledge unparalleled, and dead ol' you with your strange mechanical heart, and the womb of you bloodying black with the birth of the dead into the after-life._

He begins showing up a lot more often, meandering around with her. Thankfully quieter than her first impression of him had suggested. Kol accompanies her to lectures, is surprisingly tactful enough not to be a third wheel on her outings with Jeremy, accompanies her to the library at three in the morning and goes through her stack of postcards while she does her homework.

He taps the bottom of a sandy shoreline, next to a large pink starfish. "She doesn't know, does she?"

Bonnie looks up from her history paper. Elena thinks Professor Whittemore is an asshole, but Elena's quieter these days. There's a lot of guilt and heavy anger between them that's largely Elena's fault, they share the same room, they party, sometimes they even watch a move together, but it isn't the same. Bonnie lied, and Elena's only just barely grateful enough about Jeremy being back, and Bonnie being alive to forgive her about Caroline, but never forgiving enough to overlook that Bonnie still won't apologize for letting her go.

"That I died?" She returns to her notes. "No."

"No, _that your hoodoo's gone._ Whatever protection spell you've got in place is currently on hold. Whatever spells you've been working in the past aren't in effect anymore, not while you're dead anyway. Same way your fairy princess had to be re-invited into the Salvatore house once she kicked it to become a sparkly vampire." She frowns sharply, and he shrugs. "The dead before me recapped a lot of the theatrics."

"Caroline can handle herself, always has."

Bonnie opens her mouth, some thing grey and shimmery glitters in her peripheral and she doubles over in a scream. Strangling a quiet, high pitch at the back of her throat, her insides clawing at her, a malformed fetus with webbed claws, scrabbling away at her, tearing clumps of her apart. When her knees hit the floor of the study carrel, he's there too, snaking his arms around her and crushing her while she curses him in tongues she didn't know she knew.

Kol burrows her into him, his jacket ice cold against her bursting temples. She claws at him, screams, bites deep down into his jacket, Kol flinches sharply and her ribs flatten against each other because his hold closes tighter, _harder_. Blood doesn't pool in her mouth. Bonnie chokes on a mouthful of ash, on the deep dank grit of decay. Earthworms slither between her teeth and Bonnie draws away from the juncture of his neck, death rising up her throat.

When she's calmer, when it passes, Kol draws back and plucks away the hair matted to her damp forehead. Everything goes quiet, the roar of blood in her ears fades into a soft white noise, like the hush of rain.

He studies her closely while she's breathing hoarse and shuttered, she needs to wash the ill from her heart, the ugliness at the back of her throat. There's something terrible happening, up in New Orleans. Too fast and too quickly, deathtolls her body can't handle.

Bonnie feels the dull thrum of his false heart beneath her palm, even with her mouth fouled in death. Kol promises her, _meaning_ it. "You can too."

* * *

"I'll tell them," She's tired of him stalling. He hasn't told her how to turn it back on, how to remember and _actualize_ the zing of nature in her veins, turn it into pure energy. She's had enough, she's getting scared too. Kol follows her to a lot of places, he rolls his eyes whenever Elena speaks, downs mimosa's he's conjured out of thin air. Sometimes he's funny, poking the back of Damon's head with a finger ( which of course Damon doesn't feel, but it makes Bonnie listening to him while keeping on a straight face rather difficult.

It's disturbing though, how used to him she's getting. She doesn't have an episode as violent as the one in the library, so she hasn't given him another chance to hold her. Untangling themselves had been awkward for her, mostly because of how nonplussed Kol seemed in the face of it. She wonders if she's the only person he can touch too, it'd explain why he does it so often.

Sometimes though, he lies down on her bed, or he leans on her bathroom door and watches her do her hair. She's stopped screaming at him about her being in a towel, she watches him watch her in the mirror. Folded arms, lean, slopes against her door and chatting to her in that bored drawl.

He seems to be comfortable slinking around in her personal space, coercing her, painting her nails. Death must frustrate him, but she wouldn't know to look at him, the easy playfulness put on to mislead.

She warns him, the conversation pause. The steam's clouding the mirror when he enters, but she can still make out the tight, tense lines of him, blurring behind her back. Bonnie's hand stills in the air, mascara brush hovering midway toward her lower lashes.

His arm brushes her shoulder, Bonnie stands very still, the heat of him at her back. His palm imprints on the fogged mirror in a slow press. Bonnie breathes slow, and steady, a movement - a single movement and he could rest his temples between her shoulder blades.

The sleeve of his jacket skims her arm and stays there. For a long time no one moves, then his fingers spasm, testing, wiping at the steam. Bonnie sees his face a little clearer and even in the blur, Kol still carves up a smile that manages to be bright and sinister and optimistic simlutaneously, like a Halloween Jack O' lantern. "Will you now?"

"You haven't told me the secret yet," Bonnie looks down at the sink, shrugs. Like she doesn't care that the only thing keeping him from her naked skin is a towel, like he's showing less and less consideration about encroaching on these small intimate spaces of hers. That even her sanity is something he barely allows her. _Acting_, Bonnie swallows, _acting is hard._ "Must mean there isn't one."

When Kol hums, it tickles her nape, floods warmly down her spine, "Maybe I like spending time with you."

"Maybe," Bonnie tells the sink, if she moves a single muscle, she doesn't know what he'll do. The sirens are blaring in her head. "This is all a trick."

"It _is_ all a trick," Kol reiterates, not missing a beat, "Exactly what I told you before."

"Sorry," Bonnie corrects, her sarcasm deeply ingrained in every even word. "Excuse my wording. I meant _trap_."

"I'll teach you in due time."

"When's in due time?" She jerks her eyes back to him in the mirror, condensation trickles down the glass, ripples the angles of him. One eye looks like treacle, like it's melting. His arms' still where it is. She wants him to move it, wants him to back up, to retreat without her showing that she needs him to.

The cynical set of his mouth makes him seem older, a little more his age. "When I say so, Bonnie."

"Bullshit," Bonnie turns around, her look cool and impatient. The lip of the sink presses against her lower back, and they're closer than she calculated. Kol's body held a finger span from hers, his hand on the mirror allows him to lean forward a little, meeting her glare with a frighteningly intent look of his own. Slowly, deliberately, he moves. His right hand lands on the edge of the sink, the nudge of his knuckle pressing into her hip, it's a position that ultimately and essentially _cages_ her. He's waiting for the next words to fall out of her mouth to force his hand, she sees it clearly in the empty, tolerant quiet of him. "I don't want to lie anymore."

"I need to trust you."

"Trust me?" She echoes, her skin still flushed from the warm shower flushes _more, _hopes he sees it as morefromincredulity rather than his nearnesswhen his other hand decides to leave the mirror and grip the sink too. Both his hands around the lip of the sink, the cotton towel is the only thing that keeps his skin from her hips. Kol isn't even really touching her, but he knows how to threaten her with violence, and baser things all the same. He's very tall, very quiet, very intent. Bonnie knows his game, and she doesn't like it. "That's pretty crazy coming from you, I thought you were a realist. No," Bonnie's face twists, she shakes her head. "You tell me now, or I'll tell them. I will."

"Why'd you keep it from them so long, Bonnie?" Kol purses his lips, his face crumples, mimicking the betrayal of her friends. "Are you going to admit that you were selfish, that you kept a dirty little secret because you wanted your power back? Think of what Elena would say, what _Jeremy_ would think. All this time you've kept mum about the dead vampire in your room, because you couldn't stand being a vessel, a gateway, the electricity sucked out of your blood. Because you're scared, and you're _power hungry._"

"I'm _not_ power hungry." She _isn't._

"I know that," Kol whines, mollifying. "But they won't see it that way, will they?"

"Elena – "

"On the _off_ chance that Elena _does_ believe you, and Jeremy _forgives_ you, who's to say the same for the Salvatores? They're an awfully grabby, neck-snappy folk. They won't be able to kill you because Elena might cry, but they'll lock you up. Lock the _both _of us up," His lips peel back from his teeth, and she rears back, his pupils ink pitch. Bonnie thinks she can see bone glinting beneath his flesh, the skin of him melting away. He's just been wearing a suit, just like her, but he'll gladly shred it to show her exactly what he is. She can't pull back on a deal, not with him. "And who would blame their reasoning? Remember what magic did to you last time? How crazy, how volatile it made you?"

"…That's different!"

"Let me tell you what isn't," Kol goes on, less heated. He puts his teeth away, but the way he speaks...in a slow, condescending tone...Her insides still claw with unease. "What_ isn't_ different is that I've never lied to you about any of it. I was right about Klaus, I was right about Silas, I was right about Purgatory, about the dead. And I'm right about _this_; if you can carry something into the afterlife, don't you think you could pull something out? I'm already halfway here, just like you, Bonnie - except everyone can see _you_. When you pulled Jeremy, a part of me latched on. I've got a little magic in me, too, you know. Push me back, and _I'll push some of it into you_."

"It's not a two way door," Bonnie refuses, "It _isn't."_

"It is," Kol swears in a strained, distracted voice, desperately watching her catch her breath. "Bonnie Bennet. _I'll show you."_

* * *

"Something's weird."

"You don't _say_,"

Bonnie's smile doesn't even crack. Kol's sat on the counter, picking at his cuticles with the sharp white oak stake, legs swinging, leather jacket and mint high-tops. He catches her eyes and waggles his brows, impish Puck. "What do you mean, Jer?"

Jeremy dumps the milk and shuts the fridge. The pictures stuck to the white distract him; Bonnie in her prom dress, dad's smile lagging behind the flash - he'd been in a hurry that night. Her boyfriend makes a vexed thumbprint on the corner of it, swallowing. "Gut feeling."

Bonnie would rather they had gone to the Grille.

Kol has a smile like the swipe of a blade. "Sure it isn't just stomach ache, mate?"

* * *

Kol's thumb skates over her eyelashes, his knuckles smudge with the black tar of her mascara. He has a mortician's eye for detail, which she supposes is what she is to him really, _taxidermy_. He calls her clever but makes the mistake of assuming she's too stupid to realize when she's being patronized, when she's being made fun of. He's dead, should be deader than he is, touching her make up like he's adding some much needed final touches, twisting open the tube of Russian red lipstick she's pretty sure she never bought, _ever._

It's not her color. Kol hushes her again anyway, a soft croon, _just between us girls._ "Where're you off to, all dolled up?"

He already knows, he's already picked out her dress. Vindictive little shit.

Bonnie doesn't think her boyfriend will appreciate her waking the dead. It'll be easier to justify why she's heading off from Mystic Falls if she says she needs a vacation to recover from a break-up, temporary break up, probably. They've died for each other, things like Bonnie needing some time off won't drive a single dent into their endless love story. Bonnie has no doubt that it will always begin and end with Jeremy. _Always._

Kol presses his thumb into her cheek next, sharp edge digging into her jaw so she can open her mouth for him. Kol smiles, pleased that she's being a little more accommodating, that he's gotten her attention again. He spreads the red wax over her lips. She expect him to smear her whole face with it, ruin her hard work, but Kol's got a mortician's eye for detail and he paints within the line, frighteningly focused, frighteningly accurate.

He places the lipstick back on the dresser, his grip on her jaw still enforced. "Well?"

"I can't just disappear, you know," Bonnie tells him terse, it's odd to speak with his hold on her. There are a pair of black pumps he's pulled out for her, specifically for this occasion, she feels sick. "I've got to come up with a reason why."

"Orchestrating a lie, are you?"

Bonnie'll orchestrate hell and high water if it means raising Kol up will give her some of her life back, figuratively and _literally_. In death he has free roaming to hang around her, if he became alive one more he might be governed by rules, death cares little for crossing thresholds of other people's houses, vampires need to be invited in, the living are bound by rules, and if she had her magic - _when_ she has her magic in hand she might be able to deny him trespass. She might find out how to trap him in a tomb, how to encase him in the earth, destroy him finally, _know the secret._

"The moon's full tonight," Bonnie breathes instead, concentrating on his throat. "Good timing."

"Good timing for raising the dead, for striking down a deal."

Bonnie looks up at him, the corners of his eye crinkle. "Oh, Bonnie. You thought trust meant painting your nails and chatting about Jeremy? It's in the _deal_."

"You can't take my word?"

Kol's look is indulging, disturbingly fond. "I'll take your word, and a little more of something potent."

Blood, she has a feeling that he's done this before. A _million_ times. "Alright," she licks her lips, "deal; I raise you, you give me the secret, my magic."

He tilts his head, casually granting her wishes like the whims of a child. "Fine."

"I'm not finished," Bonnie's tone is hard, the quiet sort. "You never hurt another person again."

"Bonnie," Kol sighs, put upon. "You're being demanding, and unrealistic. Hurting others is _important_."

"Fine," She grinds out, "You don't touch my friends, or family. You don't touch the Gilberts, ever. You don't come back and re-inact your great vengeance."

"_Really?"_

"Deal or no deal, Kol?"

He grits his teeth, the break in him, his brown eyes hot and furious. "Fine," he spits, "Deal. Anything else, Oh Queen?"

"You leave Mystic Falls, and you leave me alone."

"Impossible, we might be needing each other in future."

"No, we won't."

"We will. I'm right about these things, Bonnie. Who knows when you'll be in a fix the next time? When I'll know another secret that you need."

"You don't come then, unless I call."

"Darling, I don't play the puppy half so well as my brother, please be – "

"_Realistic?_ Here's some realism for you; you've been a thorn in my side for the past three months, you've kept quiet about everything I need to know, you promise me my magic, but settle for painting my nails, and doing my hair, and _ruining my life_. I'm not allowed to tell anyone about you, so how am I supposed to _explain_ you when you pop out of the grave and decide to lounge around Mystic Falls in plain sight? You tell me all this bullshit about a secret, but give me no indication as to how you came upon it. You've been playing games with me, and I've had it. I won't tolerate it anymore."

"I've a few terms of my own, Bennet." Kol says immediately, launching into it with a tight malicious smile. God forbid she ever has the last word. "Want to hear them? You don't lock me up, you don't act against me. I can _see_ the wheels turning in your head, you don't do a thing to stop me, you hear? You don't try to work up some juju to trap me in the earth, you don't call upon the souls of the dead, upon human sacrifice, to lock me up. Lock _me_ up, your _savior_." Bonnie's jaw works, tender where he's let go. Kol's mouth twists savagely knowing her exactly. "Deal? Or no deal, witch?"

He's read her exactly, it stings, she'd hoped he wouldn't it, and expected it anyway.

Bonnie breathes through her nose,"Deal. How're we supposed to this, blood? Papyrus?"

"We don't need such formalities. Just blood, though..." Kol's all cheek. "I'm not averse to a kiss."

"I am though," Bonnie vindictively pulls a palm over her mouth, fucking up the lipstick, and flipping him off. "Averse, utterly. So fat chance, _asshole."_

* * *

A dead boy takes her hand, takes her to the grave. He shows her two blots on the ground, darker than the rest of the earth, and winks.

Bonnie's stomach turns, Silas' and Amara's double suicide, she can't explain it. She can simply _taste_ it, a barb in the bottom of her ribcage, catching at the tremble of their joined deaths. The earth bled where they did, felt the death intimately. It's dangerously charged.

Kol opens her palm gently, like he's unfurling the petals of a lotus flower. So gently if she closes her eyes she can pretend he's slipping a corsage over her wrist instead of preparing her for a terrible spell.

Midnight shines sickly moonlight on the trees, sluicing off the bark in a strange silver film. Kol presses the cold point of his knife over her palm, and slides it slow and tender, a neat cut down the flesh. It doesn't hurt, well _comparatively_, but she gasps when he wastes no time closing his fist around the blade and drawing it up in a quick, efficiently brutal jerk.

Kol grins, slinks back towards her like liquid cat and takes her hand. His wound gaping against her own, tightly he holds on, and it's…it's – Bonnie's chest rises and falls, quick and short of breath, in the dark she can see his skull, taste the earthworms, she's afraid, because if he's ever going to look like he's going to kiss her, he looks it now. Kol sees the thoughts streaking through her eyes, and strikes, she has to grits her teeth when he squeezes hard enough to turn the bones in her wrist to chalk. He prompts, ancient evil to the newly sprung, educational, _repeat-after-me, darling_. "_I swear it_."

He's got the night wind in his hair, his eyes glittering churlish, mayhem. She's going to drive spikes into his skull, and he's looking forward to seeing her try.

Blood spills onto the earth and Bonnie spits the words at his feet. One hell-raiser to another, _she swears it._

* * *

.

.

.

_We were ready to behave, but there's no freedom without no key. Whatever you think you've become,_  
_don't worry about it, dear,  
It's where you come from._

.

.

.

* * *

**AN:** /dodges bricks and rotten tomatoes./ how dare you! i tried really hard on this one!


End file.
